Word.ws English Dictionary

sponging-houses

sponging-houses is the plural of sponging-house.

Meaning of sponging-house

Noun

sponging-house (plural sponging-houses)

  1. (historical) A place of temporary confinement for debtors, kept by a bailiff, where debtors were sponged of all money they had on themselves, before being transferred to debtor's prison.
    • she perswaded the Creditors to send Two Bayliffs, who carry'd me to a Spunging-House in a very weak Condition […]1723, Charles Walker, Memoirs of Sally Salisbury, section VI

Questions about sponging-houses

What is sponging-houses the plural of?
Sponging-houses is the plural of sponging-house.

Words near sponging-houses in the dictionary

  1. sponging house
  2. sponging houses
  3. sponging out
  4. sponging up
  5. sponging-house
  6. sponging-houses
  7. spongings
  8. spongins
  9. spongio-
  10. spongioblast
  11. spongioblastoma

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sponging-houses (page history and authors); sponging-house (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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